


the bones of the world

by missveils (Missveils)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: (my first fix it yey), Falling In Love, First Kiss, First Meetings, Fix-It, M/M, Poetic, Qunari, Qunari Culture and Customs, Tenderness, The Qun (Dragon Age), Vignette, Vignettes, ashaad doesn't die, hope u like it ;u;, it's just somft....., lyrical, qunari customs but modified, saemus doesn't die, so they are less of a caricature and more of like, stanzas, what an actual culture and belief system would be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26143519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missveils/pseuds/missveils
Summary: Alone, they make the emptiness real.Together, they are the bones of the world.A series of vignettes depicting the relationship between Saemus and Ashaad. Just... very tender and soft <3 Happy ending, no one dies.
Relationships: Ashaad/Saemus Dumar
Comments: 7
Kudos: 14
Collections: Black Emporium 2020





	the bones of the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emocsibe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emocsibe/gifts).



> thanks so much for requesting this pairing! I've been wanting to write for them for so long and this was the best excuse =D  
> Note: while it's referenced in the fic, I want to make it clear that Ashaad is supposed to be 16 years old at the start of the fic, or 1 year older than Saemus.

**i.**

He had been alone all his life.

Surrounded by people? Yes. But they were never with him.

Surrounded by people as he placed the white flowers over his mother’s pyre. His father’s hand on his shoulder. But no one was really with him.

Surrounded by servants while sitting in the dining room. Sometimes with his father. But no one was really with him.

Always told “this person is busy”, “those people are dangerous”, “those children are below your station”, “those mages could turn into abominations at any second”.

And when he walked out of the city, into the wilderness of the Wounded Coast, to walk until the soles of his boots weathered and broke, no one was with him.

He walked alone.

At least until he met Ashaad.

**ii.**

“What are you reading?” he asks, when the moon is high and they have set camp near the coast.

The Qunari’s name is Ashaad . Not a name, he remembers, a title. The role he chose and inherited four years back. It means “to seek”, a scout. And he had tolerated his presence at his side so far, as he asked questions and tried to keep up with him as best as he could, tired and blistered.

For a moment, Ashaad does not answer the question. Then, he starts reading out loud. In Qunlat.

He might have taken his question literally. Or he might be waiting for Saemus to get bored. But he looks at him and listens as he recites. The words come in a steady rhythm, and Saemus can tell these are verses, poetry, or a chant. 

The words come from Ashaad, charged with emotion, and Saemus knows this is a gift. This is him sharing something very important, something close to his heart with him. 

Minutes or hours could have passed around that campfire. A small pinprick of light between the dark mountains and the vast void of the sea. Just the sound of Ashaad’s voice and the waves crashing against the cliffs.

When he stops reading, the silence is not heavy but full of warmth.

“Thank you,” says Saemus. “Would you translate it for me?”

Ashaad looks at him, grey eyes almost silver in the firelight. Then, as if Saemus had just passed some kind of test, as if he had asked the right questions, he speaks:

_Solitude is illusion. Alone in the darkness,  
I was surrounded on all sides.  
The starlight dripped from the petals  
Of cactus flowers,  
A chorus of insects sang across the dunes._

_How much abundance the world carries  
If every fistful of sand  
Is an eternity of mountains._

**iii.**

The next time he sees him, Saemus is wearing travel boots and carrying a new bow. His clothes are more appropriate for the weather and he carries the supplies he had seen Ashaad take with him before.

“You are trying to be something else,” Ashaad points out, looking at the bow. “You are the viscount’s son.”

Saemus stops, his smile freezing.

“Am I not allowed to want to learn another trade?”

“Under the Qun, you would be honoured to take the role and the profession passed on from your family to you. It’s the path that was passed onto you through generations."

“The path chosen for me was to rule Kirkwall. Do you think I would make a good leader? Would it be wise to let me, just one person, decide the fate of the city?”

“No.” His answer is immediate and it brings the smile back to Saemus’ lips.

“Precisely.” Saemus looks out to the horizon. “Maybe if I have a family of my own one day, I can pass on knowledge that does not hold a sword over their head.” 

That evening Ashaad sits and oversees Saemus shooting his first arrows. He does not correct or comment on his form. Saemus learns on his own. By making mistakes and trying again.

Saemus wonders when was the last time he was allowed to do just that. Fail and try again, try better.

At night, with the pages of the book lit by the campfire, Saemus learns his first words in Qunlat.

**iv.**

The second time they meet, Saemus brings a bag full of scrolls. He smiles at Ashaad trying to hide his curiosity as he spreads one of them over a dry rock.

“You have brought maps.”

“Yes! I thought they might help you? Make your work easier?”

Ashaad looks closer and runs a finger through the map, seemingly measuring the distances between landmarks with his thumb.

“These are wrong.”

“Huh? These are the most up to date maps I could find in the library…”

“The distances are wrong. The cities and paths are out of proportion, bigger than they are in reality. There is no season variation in them.”

Saemus laughs.

“I don’t think there’s a need. Landmarks don’t change in just one season.”

Ashaad stares at him and takes out a pencil from his bag. For a moment, Saemus thinks about stopping him, telling him how priceless these maps are, but he is already tracing lines across the cliffs.

“The rock on these cliffs is soft. Every summer when the ice melts, the range retreats. The sea advances”

Tracing some lines around the forest, he continues the explanation.

“Every summer the elven clans burn the underbrush here, here, and here, to make way for edible plants to grow stronger.”

Saemus leans forward, looking at the precise lines with interest.

“I… didn’t know any of that, no.”

“That is why we do not trust your maps. And why I am here scouting the coast.”

Saemus takes the map back, giving it one last look while smiling, before putting it back in his bag with a little chuckle.

“Are you laughing?” Ashaad asks.

“No. It’s just… You haven’t spoken this much before.” He chuckles. “I can tell this is what you love. I would like to hear more about what you do, how you… find out about all this. I am viscount’s son and I don’t even know the land outside Kirkwall.”

Ashaad’s face scrunches up, but when they walk that evening, his steps are shorter, they walk side by side. And Ashaad speaks and lets him look as he drafts the sheer drop of the cliff, winding secret paths between the caves, unreachable waterfalls.

And when they walk, his steps follow Ashaad’s like a heartbeat.

**v.**

He waits. The smell of smoke and candle wax filling his lungs and his head. They remind him of a rainy evening and running his fingers over the hem of his mother’s sleeve before saying goodbye one last time.

He can only hope this will help. Please, let this help. Let Elthina and his father understand and stop the bloodshed. Maybe coming here would show them that he cares, that there can be a bridge between them and the Qunari.

Let them-

The steel bites into his flesh.

And he hears the screams in the streets outside the Chantry.

**vi.**

When he wakes, the screams have turned to the murmur of waves against the shore.

When he wakes, the smell of seaweed has replaced the scent of incense.

When he wakes, his father is dead. The Arishok is dead.

When he wakes, Ashaad is tending to his wound, his hands working steady and careful.

When he wakes, Ashaad tells him “We do not leave our own behind.”

**vii.**

The passing of the years takes them to cold and rainy Ferelden. Saemus learns the edges of mountains, how to measure distances, how to tell the weather, how to follow tracks.

Ashaad does not teach him as much as he just lets him watch how he does it. Try. Fail. Try again. No reproach, no criticism. 

Learning is just seeing things as they are. Some days, Saemus wants to believe he can see them as Ashaad does.

He learns to read Qunlat. He speaks it sometimes. If he speaks it wrong or if his accent is horrible, Ashaad makes no comment on it.

And one day he stops on his tracks, looks at the starry sky, and realises that it’s been years since he has felt alone.

At night they sleep close to each other. At first, when it’s cold. Or when they have to stay at an inn.

With time it becomes a constant. The presence of Ashaad grounds him, becomes the walls for a home he has not had in a long time. Sometimes he wakes up with Ashaad’s palm on his chest, feeling his heartbeat, clinging to it like a raft at sea.

He calls him kadan. Saemus knows what this means.

“To call a thing by its name is to know its reason in the world,” comes Saemus’ response, in stammering whispered Qunlat.

**viii.**

The next morning, they are caught in a storm in the middle of a field and Saemus kisses him. The Qunari leans into the kiss as Saemus holds his face between his hands.

“Would this... Would this be against the Qun?” he asks, as he takes in a breath.

“No.”

“Would it not distract you from your work? Your purpose in the world?”

“What about this is not part of my purpose?”

Saemus throws his arms around him and kisses him again.

**ix.**

“You are training me,” Saemus says. “Actively, I mean. You are correcting my posture. Teaching me how to hunt.”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t done that before.”

“It was time. I have been called and we will soon go to Par Vollen, kadan.”

The arrow hits the center of the mark on the tree. The first time this morning.

“You know I would like to stay with you. Like this. Like how we have been the past few years.”

Ashaad does not reply. Saemus smiles and shoots another arrow.

“I think that my purpose is to be with you, kadan. If that means being Ashaad too I would not refuse that title.”

**x.**

His hair has greyed. His kadan has wrinkles that flow like rivers over his face. A scar very similar to his own crosses his face on the opposite side.

He is Ashaad. His kadan is Ashaad.

Between them, they know their names. To the rest of the world, they share an entwined existence. Their steps fall at the same rhythm and they share the same place in the world. 

They can spend months apart at a time, but the Arishok knows that when they are together, they are stronger. They cover more land, they are invincible against enemies.

They share a role, and they share a life. They will share a life for as long as the years allow it.

He has not been alone in many, many years.

_Solitude is illusion. Alone in the darkness,  
_ _I was surrounded on all sides._

**Author's Note:**

> Update 17/09:   
> Made some edits to fix some typos and to refine the references to the adaptation of qunari lore in this fic. All credit goes to [this post by the-eldritch-it-gay](https://the-eldritch-it-gay.tumblr.com/post/628073044363067392/rewriting-the-qunari) for the incredible and amazing re-wrtiting of qunari lore <3


End file.
